gatsby

The tragedy of Gatsby in The Great Gatsby

Abstract:The Great Gatsby is a classic work written by Fitzgerald, which is about disillusionment of American dream, and it is still a piece of language endowed with connotations and full of metaphors and mottoes. This paper will analyze Gatsby’s tragedy from his dream, love to death.

Key words: Gatsby; tragedy; dream; love; death

1.Introduction: Scott. Fitzgerald is a prominent novelist in the American literature;

own the title of the spokesman of the Jazz Age and the laurel of poet. From the contents to the thoughts, the creative traits, the novel, The Great Gatsby, is a real masterpiece of him, which makes him get success in writing. In this novel, the author vividly describes the tragedy in Gatsby’s life. And this essay will analyze the tragedy in three aspects.

2. The tragedy of Gatsby

His love

Gatsby’s ideal lover is his first lover, Daisy; he strives only to hope to match with her. However, Daisy is not as perfect as Gatsby always imaging in his mind. She is just a badly worldly woman with a good appearance and empty soul. Contrast with Gatsby’s hospitality, spoon and romantic, Daisy possesses neither romantics ideals nor the real sacrificial bravery of sacrificing for the ideal, only to desire for comfortable worldly life. She returns to Gatsby just because she finds Gatsby is richer than his husband, Tom Buchanan. After she cracks up Tom’s mistress by chance, she chooses to escape with her husband and leaves the guilty to Gatsby. She even has no attempt to admit she is the wrecker indeed. Gatsby treats a person who actually is coward, worldly and immoral, as his best ideal. He accepts all responsibilities and sacrifices his life, which causes his tragedy.

2.2His dream

Gatsby is a typical representative of the American dream which consists of two complementary aspects, respectively the material and the spiritual.

The material aspect of the American dream refers to the pursuit of the wealth, Gatsby, also, is inevitably carried away by this tide of wealth accumulation. With the long-expected dream of entering the community of the rich, he turned to bootlegging and achieved a meteoric rise from rags to riches.

For Gatsby, his ultimate goal in his concept of the American dream is Daisy, the possession of whom can give him the most satisfactory sense of self-fulfillment. Gatsby longs for having Daisy to his own and craves for the sense of fulfillment. Driven by the desire, he takes up bootlegging, in an attempt to achieve his ends through sheer material means, through the power that he thinks he commands from his wealth.

2.3His death

Finally, Gatsby is killed wrongly. Up to his last breath, Gatsby was still waiting for Daisy’s call which will never happen. Sadly, though he has treated so many people

in life, there is nobody among his guests to attend his funeral except Nick and his father, which is also a symbol of his tragic life.

3. Conclusion

Gatsby’s falsity is that he is too innocent to see through that his beloved Daisy is dishonest and unconscientiously. Fitzgerald once summarizes people’s characters at that time as “all Gods have died, all the wards have been over, and all the faiths have faded away.”(Fitzgerald, 1991)At the end of the novel, Gatsby’s lonely funeral ceremony and people’s indifference completely reflects humanities coolness and ugliness in the society of U.S.A in 1920’s. In that era, Gatsby is destined to be isolated and to fail in the end in this society.

References

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金忍冬，解读_了不起的盖茨比_中主人公盖茨比的爱情悲剧，《作家杂志》2013年第3期

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